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Mars rover seen by orbiter
Dazzling images from Mars are revealed by scientists. The robotic rover Opportunity has reached the massive Victoria crater with its steep cliffs and layers of rock exposing the planet's geologic history. Meanwhile, the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has photographed the rover and its surroundings from high above.

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STS-35: Insights into lifestyles of the galaxies
Loaded with a package of telescopes in its payload bay, shuttle Columbia soared into space for the first ASTRO mission in December 1990. The crew narrates this highlights film from the STS-35 mission in which the astronauts worked around the clock in two shifts to operate the observatory. The flight launched and then landed at night, and included the astronauts teaching from space.

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Hubble discovery
n this news conference from NASA Headquarters, scientists announce the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of 16 extrasolar planet candidates orbiting a variety of distant stars in the central region of our Milky Way galaxy. Five of the newly found planets represent a new extreme type of planet not found in any nearby searches.

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Atlantis to hangar
After its safe landing to end mission STS-115, space shuttle Atlantis is towed from the Kennedy Space Center runway to hangar 1 of the Orbiter Processing Facility for post-flight deservicing and the start of preparations leading to its next mission, STS-117.

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STS-115 landing
Space shuttle Atlantis glides to a smooth touchdown on Kennedy Space Center's Runway 33 at 6:21 a.m. to conclude the successful STS-115 mission that restarted construction of the space station.

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Soyuz TMA-9 docking
The Russian Soyuz TMA-9 space capsule carrying the Expedition 14 resident crew and space tourist Anousheh Ansari safely docks to the International Space Station's Zvezda service module.

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Expedition 14 launch
This extended duration movie follows the Soyuz rocket from the final countdown through arrival in orbit with the Expedition 14 crew. The video shows the three-stage rocket's ascent from Baikonur Cosmodrome and includes views of Mike Lopez-Alegria, Mikhail Tyurin and Anousheh Ansari from cameras inside the capsule.

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Swift performs headcount of local black holes
GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER NEWS RELEASE
Posted: October 7, 2006

NASA scientists using the Swift satellite have conducted the first complete census of galaxies with active, central black holes, a project that scanned the entire sky several times over a nine-month period.

The all-sky survey contains more than 200 supermassive black holes called Active Galactic Nuclei, or AGN, and provides a definitive census of black hole activity in the local universe. The team uncovered many new black holes that were previously missed, even in well-studied galaxies, and other surprises as well.

"We are confident that we are seeing every active, supermassive black hole within 400 million light years of Earth," said Jack Tueller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., who led the effort. "With each passing month, we are able to probe deeper into the universe, and the census becomes richer."

AGN have a mass of millions to billions of suns, which are confined within a region about the size of our solar system. The term "active" refers to the process of actively pulling in gas and whole stars and generating copious amounts of energy from a tiny galactic core in the process. Examples include quasars and Seyfert galaxies.

Swift was built primarily to study gamma-ray bursts. During waiting times between bursts, Swift's Burst Alert Telescope, which is sensitive to the highest-energy X-rays, scans the sky. AGN generate X-rays as well as many other forms of light. Many AGN, however, are hidden behind dust and gas, which block lower-energy light, such as visible light. Because higher-energy X-rays are so penetrating, Swift can detect AGN missed by other surveys, allowing for an unbiased count.

Nearly every massive galaxy seems to have a supermassive black hole, but only a few percent appear to be active. Our galaxy's central black hole is dormant, and this and similar black holes are not included in the Swift census. All black holes were likely once active, and why some remain active and others are dormant in the modern, local universe is a mystery.

"You can't understand the universe without understanding black holes," said Richard Mushotzky of Goddard, a census team leader. "Perhaps as much as 20 percent of all of the radiated energy in the universe---most X-rays, large fractions of ultraviolet and infrared light, and a good deal of radio waves---arise in one way or another from AGN activity."

One key census finding is the discovery of AGN in starburst galaxies, which are bright from star formation. These dust-enshrouded AGN, uncovered by Swift, will enable a detailed test of the idea that black hole activity and star formation go hand in glove, feeding each other. Swift also sees hints of cocooned black holes, so embedded in dust that they are completely invisible except in the higher-energy X-ray band.

The initial census results, from data collected in 2005, are a "first taste of things to come," Tueller said. Each scan of the sky is stacked atop existing scans, equivalent to a long camera exposure, so black holes from deeper in the universe will eventually be detected.=20

Swift builds upon two other surveys. The European INTEGRAL satellite completed a high-energy X-ray survey earlier in 2006, although this focused on the galactic plane and not the whole sky. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory conducted a lower-energy X-ray survey of a small fraction of the sky, providing a sample of the more-luminous black holes that formed in the early universe.

Swift also carries X-ray and ultraviolet/optical telescopes, enabling quick confirmation of new active galaxy candidates. This broad coverage in three wavelength regimes is critical for black hole studies.

"The Swift black hole catalogue can be used in a thousand ways," said Craig Markwardt of Goddard and the University of Maryland, who combined the nine-month Swift data into all-sky images. "It's hard to believe the whole sky is peppered with black holes. You need powerful X-ray vision like Swift's to see them."

Launched in November 2004, Swift is a NASA mission managed by Goddard in partnership with the Italian Space Agency and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, United Kingdom. Penn State University personnel control science and flight operations. NASA Goddard built the Burst Alert Telescope.

A NASA Goddard team presents this census at a press conference in San Francisco at the American Astronomical Society's High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting.